absolutely, yet the US military today has no active decoy programs, they’d rather bet the bank on stealth. the IAF for one does use decoys

MALD and MALD-J are in production and in the inventory and, last I heard, there were healthy stocks of ITALD in USN service?

I’m a bit confused here, isn’t the best way to kill a carrier with a submarine? for example I’m pretty sure the Dutch Royal Air Force would never even get close to a carrier, yet in exercises outdated Dutch subs have had great succes “sinking” US carriers. and I’m not even talking about Chinese IBMs

Right some misconceptions to clear. If you want to sink a carrier a spread of heavyweight torpedoes is arguably the best tool to do it. Sinking a carrier is different to going through the whole kill-chain of searching, localising, identifying, tracking and then shooting and the latter is something a submarine on its own is not well suited for. Even a fairly advanced SSN with a towed array has a tactical sensor footprint….an average SSK’s is usually more modest and constrained by the platforms limited discrete mobility. Lots of peoples SSK’s have done well against US carriers on exercise. The exercise is usually scripted to make sure of that. Chinese IBM’s need cueing to fire and currently China has no publically recognised survivable search/track/identify asset to provide weapon cueing. To provide a defense against a carrier the optimum platform to undertake it is another carrier.

the same goes for tanks, in the 70’s Israeli and Egyptian/Syrian tanks got butchered by enemy infantry equiped with anti-tank missiles, while the tanks had serious trouble countering these units

In certain conditions infantry can perform well for a given period within a limited range. The tank though is the best inherent tank destroyer in terms of weapon effects, targeting, mobility and survivability.

it’s the rock-paper-scissors discussion: my point is that while an F-22 or even an F-35 has a large advantage over 4th generation aircraft, they’d be no match for swarms of cheap UAVs or decoys, because they lack the ability to effeciently destroy them. it’s like using an elephant gun to hunt vermin: not effective, very costly and you’re more likely to hit yourself than a rat

No its not. If you only have an elephant gun you dont hunt rats that way….you place traps or find their nest. Back to square one…you dont hit the swarm…you hit the control node local or central as necessary…you hit the logistics supporting the dozen upon dozen of UAVs etc.

and I’m argumenting that the F-35 is not a reliable and dependable investment, but rather a huge waste of money that would have been better used on UAVs (or budget cuts )

In which case you are wrong. The best option is both and, seeing the US is currently trialling a UCAV prototype on a CVN and deploying the most comprehensive BAMS ocean recce capability on the planet etc, I think its hard to make the case that they arent doing that.

1. you don’t need an onboard radar to launch for example the AMRAAM. the F-35 for example will be able to launch it using data information from another F-35 (an ability the Typhoon has as well), or even backwards using data from rear-facing optical sensors. all an AMRAAM needs is target data, and it does everything else. if that data comes from the launch platform, another aircraft, a ground station or a satellite is irrelevant

You need a radar and you need a datalink with a very short latency. Satellite transmission adds latency…to any datalink…the signal has to transit to orbit and back and several good laws of physics dictate the maximum speed that can happen at. If you have a missile and inbound contact at a couple of thousand knots closure just a second off on a course update can give you a 50ft miss.

2. AMRAAMs are used for SAM missions, so I doubt launch vehicle velocity is very relevant. the SL AMRAAM has a range of 40 km, opposed to the 55–75 km range on the air launched version. so velocity adds 35 km at best, hardly a factor against 70’s Soviet jets equiped with only short ranged missiles

AMRAAMs are used in a ground role for point defence not interception. You dont develop an unmanned air capability for point defence…use the ground based AMRAAM!. Better yet spread FLAADS trucks on ingress/egress routes tied to the local surveillance net with ADADs local backup…cheap, passive, lethal and easy to resupply. Save you a lot of effort trying to squirt target course updates to the cloud of cheap drones orbitting around hoping something flies into their shortened missile NEZ. A vain hope when the simple expedient of a 60 degree angle off on ingress, 50km baseleg, then turn back onto target bearing probably takes them past your airborne minefields lethal envelope!. They certainly arent going to do much on a tailchase or an intercept vector if theyre topping out at 250knts!!!.

The US looked at this and came up with MALI, which was supersonic, based on the MALD airframe and it hasnt been heard of in a decade after allegedly completing its development. That was a very much superior system to a slow-mover UAV with a couple of BVRAAMs.

Fed

The adaptable design sounded like a great idea at the time but the execution was not good

I dont know if thats the case Fed. To me it looks more a case that the ‘adaptable design’, as Graeme demonstrates, somehow became perceived as a quick change capability. I guess I’ve been guilty of saying that the only things required would be physical siting of the hardware and supporting infrastructure…which is still the case…but that action is still many months of work and further months of testing.

Speaking for myself the term ‘only’ was used because it doesnt mean chopping the hull and inserting a plug to stretch the ships length and provide bunkerage/stores/hangar spaces etc. It doesnt mean losing x, y and z spaces to add an additional genset that was never allowed for in the design to drive the cats etc. In that context CVF really IS an adaptable design….its just a serious job making the adaptation as it always wouldve been.

that’s what everyone tells me, but that’s my whole point: that’s a traditionalist’s argument. what if an opponent doesn’t think like that…for example who says those UAVs need satellite guidance? you can simply put them on auto-route, and take control using nearby manned or relay aircraft/ship/ground stations as the situation requires

You see the issue there is that, regardless of the abstract and ‘innovative’ thought your comms relay still needs to relay into somewhere and that somewhere is a critical fail point in the system. Any relay system that isnt a satellite is cheaper but, necessarily, is required to be more numerous for reasons of redundancy, surviveability and reachability. You then need a core C3 node to oversee the distributed C3 nodes and so on and so forth. There’s only so far you can collapse the core and spread the C3 before you complicate the picture and start introducing multiple, weaker, points of local vulnerability.

by making what are basically target decoys, you really can make such UAVs in huge numbers at a cost as low as $100,000 each. the problem for an opposing force, like say a squadron of F-22’s, is that they won’t know what they’re shooting at until they get a visual, and even if they try to target the more advanced/manned controller aircarft in the wave, their missiles will probably be intercepted by the drone wave or counter-missiles

So why not build MALD/MALD-J and missile soak really cheap if thats the intent?. Better yet use a net of persistent high-end drones, LO where possible, as the cueing/bus platform for the MALDs. Anyone will tell you use of decoys in this fashion is anything but revolutionary though…Israelis started developing the concept in 71, used it in 73, and the USAF used it equally as successfully over Iraq two decades later. In your terminology its a ‘traditional’ tactic.

yes, but it was probably because they lost the war that they completely rethought the way they fought, while the victors clinged to their old ways. resulting in a technological and material inferior German army that in 1940 achieved the fastest and greatest victory in human history

….and before that suffered through more than a decade of incredible privation then a decade of political rule that suited some a great deal more than others!. Losing the First World War was catastrophic for Germany and the development of Blitzkreig in no way balances that. Military force is diplomacy ‘by other means’. In any analysis Germany would have been better off winning WW1 than losing it to get to WW2!.

in the same way, the US military, having been the world’s dominant air and sea power for the last 60 years or so, has pretty much stalled in the way it thinks and fights, while the Chinese underdog/dragon is adopting new technologies at unseen speeds, anything from UAVs to cyberwarfer to stealth and laser technology

Yes the ‘plucky underdog’ is a very romantic concept. To fight a carrier though you need a carrier as the Chinese are well aware!. To fight a tank you need a tank. To fight a submarine its best to send one of your own. Its an irony, but also a truism, to say that in combat you most frequently train to kill the enemy most like yourself!. WW1 spiky-hatted chap blazing away with his Maxim would surely have liked to see some friendly tanks passing through his own lines into no-mans as he saw his bullets bouncing off the ponderously advancing British Mk5!.

the first machine guns and tanks were useless, the next generations was still cumbersome and had serious flaws, but these examples show that clinging to the old ways can lead to a huge cost in both lives and military power. in order to go forward, one has to let go of the past

Not in peer terms they weren’t useless…very much the reverse in fact as the illustration above notes. For the rest you are talking revolution over evolution which will never find much of a home in military services anywhere. The stakes, that those who plan for military actions work with, are simply too high to stray far from the known and quantifiable. Innovation has its place, but, so does reliable and dependable.

another point is air-to-air combat. the military keeps stressing that this is not possible, even though a stripped down Predator fired a Stinger in combat back in 2003, and putting more advanced missiles on a UAV would be technically very feasible

They stress this because its true. What happened to that drone that fired the Stinger….and did the Stinger score on the MiG in question?. Hardly testimony for the concept is it?. If you want to build a big, fast, platform with a hugely powerful onboard radar and multiple BVRAAM carry surely you could have some kind of airborne missile battery, but, it would be costing pretty much what a manned combat aircraft would and be less flexible than the manned platform. Putting BVRAAM’s on slow mover UAV’s is insane unless its a point-defence platform. Intercept geometry always favours the fast platform and BVRAAM range is dramatically impacted by the launch impetus provided by the firing platform. Once you build in fast, practical range/endurance, adequate sensor package and multiple BVRAAM carry into an airframe you are leaving ‘cheap’ far behind.

how does one stop wave after wave of UAVs, each costing as little as $100,000, when the missiles used to shoot them down cost at least $500,000, and the aircraft used to do it cost at least $50 million?

By knocking down the billion dollar satellite linking the UAV’s to the backend C3 system. Or by suppressing the airfields that your cheap lo-end UAV’s are stacked up on. Or, in a maritime context, by deceptive manouevre sending your UAV swarm to the wrong place.

Your machine-gun analogy was actually a very good one Sanem. This is as it shows what happens when there is a reliance on one weapon system. The allies had no answer for German MG’s in the trenches….then tanks came about. Ultimately then the Germans lost that war.

I’m a devotee of UAV tech, but, a ‘swarm’ of lo-end UAV’s doesnt present any real revolutionary threat as, to be used at range, must be used as part of a system of systems which is distinctly NOT cheap…and contains critical fail points. What UAV’s do offer though is legacy distribution potential and endurance. The UAV doesnt have to do every job to bring revolutionary capability to the battlespace…just the ones its attributes make it suitable for.

Dude, seriously, y’all need to ditch the ski-jump and that forward bridge, convert that thing to nuclear, add EMALS or EMCAT and buy the F-35C.

A 20% increase in size wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Dude, like, y’all are talking about building a USN supercarrier and, like, y’know the RN arent the USN!.

Did you know, dude, like the RN are only standing up 2 fastjet squadrons, man and thats at most. The rest of the fighters, dude, are coming from the RAF and, like, those pilots wont be deck qualified routinely.

We dont all, man, get to run budget deficits like y’all do so we need a carrier that can do the job of one of your LPH’s or (most of) one of your CVN’s or a blend of both in one ship…and we need it cheaper than one of your CVNs with a fraction of the crew needs.

We build our ships to our needs…not to be like y’all y’hear?!

On the DJ’s issue itself I’m content that, had they been able to see the future and the tragic events surrounding this nurse, they’d never have made the phone call.

My view is that there is no work-related issue that should have been significant enough to propel this woman to devastate her children in the way she has…at the end of the day it was her decision to end her life and no-one elses. If she was of such a fragile mental state she should have been under professional care regardless…especially if responsible for children.

All that said it is my strong hope that this death might just make the next ‘entertainer’, aiming for a cheap laugh at someone elses expense, pause for thought for a minute to consider the potential ramifications of their actions.

….and I too would have no objection to Williams first born girl being called Jacintha…a pretty name even if it wasn’t a show of basic human empathy!.

How far back do you want to go in history CD?. Go back to the Magna Carta and beyond there is a chain of crown ownership stretching back centuries. I think its frankly ludicrous to try and make out this is some gross larceny forced on the public!.

Since the 18th century the revenues from those estates has been going into the public purse anyway…seems a bit of a redundancy to pry them off the ‘evil’ monarchy to do…er….just the same thing with them!. Save for the fact it would give the republicans more grounds to whine about the civil list….though at a roughly 20 to 1 annual ratio of money going in to the Treasury as opposed to coming out they’ll be a while waiting for the ‘scroungers’ label to fit!.